White Balance in Lightroom: Fixing Color Casts

Your photo has a color cast. Everything looks orange, or blue, or weirdly green. The image doesn't match what you saw, and it doesn't match what you want.

This is a white balance problem, and it's one of the most common issues photographers face.

White balance is almost always fixable, and if you shot in RAW, it's fixable with zero quality loss. Here's how.

What White Balance Actually Is

Every light source has a color. Daylight is blue-ish, tungsten bulbs are orange-ish, and fluorescent lights are green-ish. Your eyes automatically adjust, so you barely notice, but cameras don't adjust as well.

White balance is the process of telling your camera (or editing software) what "white" should look like under the current light. Once white is correctly calibrated, all other colors fall into place.

When white balance is wrong, whites look colored, and that color cast spreads across everything. Fix the white balance, and the whole image corrects.

The Two Sliders: Temperature and Tint

Lightroom gives you two white balance controls:

Temperature (Blue to Yellow)

This is the primary adjustment, since most color casts are temperature-related.

• Move left (cooler/blue): Counteracts warm light sources like tungsten, candlelight, or warm LEDs. Also useful for reducing overly warm golden hour shots.

• Move right (warmer/yellow): Counteracts cool light like shade, overcast sky, or blue-tinged LEDs. Also adds intentional warmth.

The slider goes from roughly 2000K to 50000K (Kelvin). Lower numbers are cooler; higher numbers are warmer.

Tint (Green to Magenta)

This handles the secondary axis of color balance. It's less commonly needed but critical when it is.

• Move left (more green): Counteracts magenta casts (rare).

• Move right (more magenta): Counteracts green casts, which are common with fluorescent lighting and some LED sources.

Most adjustments are Temperature. Tint fine-tunes when temperature alone doesn't solve the problem.

Method 1: The Eyedropper

The fastest way to fix white balance.

How to Use It:

1. Click the eyedropper (or press W) to activate it.

2. Find something neutral in your image. Look for something that should be gray, white, or black. Not stark white (which may be blown out) or deep black (which may lack information), but a middle neutral.

Good targets:

• White shirts or paper (not stark white, but light gray areas within them)
• Gray concrete or pavement
• White walls in neutral light
• The whites of someone's eyes (if visible and well-lit)
• Any surface you know should be colorless

3. Click on the neutral area. Lightroom calculates what color that pixel actually is and shifts Temperature and Tint to make it neutral.

4. Evaluate the result. Does the overall image look right? Check skin tones, check the sky, check other known colors.

If it's close but not quite right, fine-tune manually from this starting point.

When the Eyedropper Fails:

• No neutral reference in frame. If everything in your image has color, there's nothing for the eyedropper to calibrate from.

• Clicked something that isn't neutral. That "white" wall might actually be cream colored. That "gray" surface might be slightly blue.

• Mixed lighting confuses things. If your image has multiple light sources with different colors, clicking one area calibrates for that light but makes other areas look wrong.

When the eyedropper doesn't nail it, adjust manually.

Method 2: Manual Adjustment

Sometimes you need to adjust by eye, especially for creative effect or when the eyedropper doesn't work.

Start with Temperature:

Ask yourself: does the image look too warm (orange/yellow) or too cool (blue)?

• Too warm? Move Temperature left.
• Too cool? Move Temperature right.

Make the adjustment, then evaluate. Look at skin tones if present, since they're sensitive indicators. Look at whites in the scene. Do they look white?

Then Adjust Tint:

After Temperature is close, check for green or magenta cast.

• Greenish cast? Move Tint right.
• Magenta cast? Move Tint left.

Tint adjustments are usually smaller than Temperature. Often just +5 to +15 fixes fluorescent green.

Creative vs Corrective:

Sometimes "correct" white balance isn't what you want. A sunset should feel warm. Technically correcting it to neutral removes the mood. A moody blue-hour scene should feel cool.

After getting neutral, you can deliberately push Temperature or Tint for emotional effect. This is different from having wrong white balance by accident.

Method 3: Presets (As Shot, Auto, Daylight, etc.)

Lightroom's white balance dropdown offers presets:

• As Shot: Whatever your camera recorded
• Auto: Lightroom's best guess
• Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Flash: Approximations for these light sources

These work well as starting points. For example, if you shot under tungsten light but your camera was set to daylight, selecting Tungsten will make a big initial correction.

Click one, see if it helps, then fine-tune from there.

Special Situations

Mixed Lighting

This is the hardest white balance scenario. Different light sources in the same scene have different colors, like tungsten in one area and daylight in another.

There's no single white balance that fixes both, but you have a few options.

Choose a priority. Correct for the most important area (usually the subject) and accept that other areas will have casts.

Use local adjustments. The Adjustment Brush has Temperature and Tint controls. Paint over areas that need different correction than the global setting.

Convert to black and white. If color correction is impossible, removing color solves the problem.

Accept the reality. Sometimes mixed lighting is the aesthetic. Warm interior, cool window light. This contrast can be beautiful if intentional.

Skin Tones

Skin is the most critical color to get right because our eyes are extremely sensitive to faces.

When correcting white balance with people in frame, follow these steps.

1. Get global white balance close using neutral references.
2. Check skin. Does it look healthy and natural?
3. If skin is still off but backgrounds are fine, use local adjustments on skin.

Skin should never be pure orange, pure red, or noticeably gray. A slight warmth is usually more flattering than neutral.

RAW vs JPEG

If you shot RAW, white balance changes are essentially free. The original data hasn't had any processing applied, so you can set any white balance without quality loss.

If you shot JPEG, the camera's white balance has already been baked in. You can still adjust, but you're fighting against processing that already happened. Shifts are more likely to cause artifacts or quality loss.

This is one of RAW's biggest practical advantages.

Batch Application

White balance corrections apply beautifully across batches. If you shot a whole session under the same light, correct one image, then sync white balance to all similar images.

See How to Batch Edit Photos for details.

Common Color Casts and Fixes

Orange Indoor Photos

Cause: Tungsten lighting (traditional incandescent bulbs)

Fix: Move Temperature significantly left (cooler), often 1000-2000K or more

Blue/Gray Shade Photos

Cause: Open shade is lit by blue sky, not direct sun

Fix: Move Temperature right (warmer), typically 500-1500K

Green-Tinted Photos

Cause: Fluorescent lights, some LEDs, or reflected light from foliage

Fix: Move Tint toward magenta. May also need Temperature adjustment.

Yellow Overcast Photos

Cause: Cloudy light through pollution or at certain times of day

Fix: Move Temperature left if too warm. Often subtle.

Magenta-Tinted Photos

Cause: Rare, but some LED lights or unusual conditions

Fix: Move Tint toward green

Golden Hour Overcorrection

Cause: Auto white balance tried to neutralize warm sunset light

Fix: Move Temperature right to restore the natural warmth

The Final Check

After adjusting white balance, zoom out and look at the whole image. Ask yourself these questions.

• Do neutrals look neutral?
• Do skin tones look healthy?
• Does the mood match what I want?
• Are there any obvious color casts remaining?

If yes to all, you're done. If something still feels off, check Tint if you only adjusted Temperature, or look for localized color problems that need targeted correction.

More in This Guide

• Why Your Colors Look Wrong After Editing. When white balance is right but colors are still off
• How to Get Natural Skin Tones. The critical intersection of white balance and faces
• Lightroom Basics: A Simple Editing Workflow. Where white balance fits in your process
• The Lightroom Sliders That Actually Matter. Temperature and Tint in context
• RAW vs JPEG: Why File Format Matters. Why RAW makes white balance correction easier
• How to Batch Edit Photos. Applying white balance corrections at scale

Next Step

White balance problems often start with the light itself. Understanding how different light sources create different colors helps you anticipate issues when shooting, and sometimes avoid them entirely.

Related Guides

Lighting Fundamentals. Light creates color casts. Understanding light helps you fix them.

Common Photography Mistakes. Wrong white balance settings are a frequent shooting error.

White balance is one of those adjustments that feels technical but is actually quite intuitive. Does the image look right? If not, is it too warm or too cool? The answer guides your adjustment. Trust your eyes, because they know what natural color looks like.

New to photography? Start with our Complete Beginner's Guide to build your foundation from the ground up.